After announcing that she was in remission in 2017, Shannen Doherty was hopeful that her two-year-long battle with breast cancer was over. But just last week, the “Beverly Hills 90210” star shared the devastating news that she’s silently been fighting stage 4 breast cancer for nearly a year.
“It’s going to come out in a matter of days or a week that I have stage 4,” Doherty said in an emotional interview with ABC’s ‘Good Morning America.’ “So my cancer came back and that’s why I’m here.”
Though she’s been pretty public about her diagnosis since the beginning, the reality that the cancer is back has still not hit the 48-year-old actress.
“I don’t think that I’ve processed it,” explained Doherty. “It’s a bitter pill to swallow in a lot of ways. I definitely have days where I say, ‘Why me?’ And then I go, ‘Well why not me? Who else? Who else beside me deserves this?’ None of us do. I would say that my first reaction is always concern about how am I going to tell my mom, my husband.”
Thankfully, Doherty’s husband, photographer Kurt Iswarienko, has been more than supportive throughout her arduous journey. In fact, it’s strengthened their marriage in ways she never could have imagined.
In what she now has called a ‘terrible move’ on her part, Doherty shared her initial 2015 diagnosis with Iswarienko over the phone.
Waiting in the driveway for his wife to get home, Iswarienko said, “We are going to get through this. You are going to be OK. We are going to get through this, you’re strong, and you’re powerful, and you’re not going anywhere.”
“You have so much to do in your life,” the encouraging hubby added. “We are going to get through it as a family.”
